Editors Letter – September 2019
This won’t be the first time I’ve done it, but I am about to say something that makes me look a bit like an idiot in the context that I say it. I want to make a point about how we don’t celebrate people who create businesses in the same way that we do, say the All Blacks. If you have come to this page via the cover, which I assume you would have, you will have noticed that we feature All Black, Richie Mo’unga, on the cover. An awesome guy, by the way, with some really great insights into performance and success. Also, in the issue we feature a transcript from an interview with the founder of CreditWorks, Ronnie Tan from our last Success Summit. As well as sharing his disruption of the credit reporting industry, the madness of some company valuations, and the focus on growth over profit, Ronnie also laments the fact we don’t truly seem to celebrate success. He then compared us to Macau as an example, after a recent trip there.
“A tour guide took us up to this hill and told us that was where the celebrities lived. Except they weren’t your typical celebrities, these were business people. There’s a police hut on every corner of the street because these people are very influential. I asked why they celebrated all these people. They said ‘These are the people that invest in our society and create jobs for us. They gave us an opportunity.’”
He then suggested that if we celebrated business, like we celebrate the All Blacks, this country will never see the end of success.
The more cynical observer might call me a hypocrite for highlighting this point while celebrating an All Black, but I don’t think that this is a zero sum equation. I think we should still celebrate the incredible talent and focus and success of someone like Richie Mo’unga, and maybe also take some the hype and fervour that we put into a Bledisloe Cup match into also getting behind people who are playing a different competition.
At the same time though, as Richie shows in his interview, there are a lot of lessons that the discipline and the focus and the tenacity of an All Black can provide for business owners and founders too. So if you are a business owner and you start getting a bit of flack for the amount of time that you are dedicating to watching RWC games, you can quite rightfully say it is work research so that you can also continue doing your bit for the country.
